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Washington Endorses Gunpoint Election in Honduras

The Obama administration has declared its support for elections being held this Sunday in Honduras, under conditions in which the regime that came to power in a coup last June has refused to cede power and is preparing intense repression against those who oppose it.

The action has placed Washington at odds with virtually all of Latin America, whose governments have refused to recognize the elections as legitimate.

The US endorsement of the elections represents the culmination of a policy that has lent political support to the coup regime headed by the Liberal Party leader of the national legislature, Roberto Micheletti, and the Honduran military, even as Washington has given lip service to the principle of restoring the country’s elected president, Manuel Zelaya, to power.

Zelaya was dragged from the presidential palace by hooded and heavily armed soldiers in the early morning hours of June 28, bundled onto an airplane and flown into exile. Since his clandestine return to the country two months ago, he has been forced to remain holed up in the Brazilian embassy.

In advance of a meeting of the Organization of American States in Washington Monday, the US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, sent a letter defending Washington’s position, insisting that Sunday’s elections “are not something invented by the de facto government as a way out or to whitewash the coup.”

The holding of the vote, Valenzuela said, is “consistent with the constitutional mandate to elect the president and congress.”